Shelley suffers first power outage of the year

SHELLEY: Electrical power was lost for several hours to approximately 5,300 residential, business and schools in and around Shelley, Northern Bingham, and Southern Bonneville County areas this afternoon.

The power went out at approximately 12:47 p.m. for almost 2 hours for most Rocky Mountain Power customers in the city of Shelley.

“An unknown condition along a transmission line caused the power failure,” Rocky Mountain Power spokesman Jona Whitesides said. “An unknown condition means that when they inspected the power line, they didn’t find any bird strike or other physical evidence to show what caused the insulator to short out.”

Rocky Mountain was able to reroute and restore power to 1,000 customers within an hour. They were also able to restore power to all but 54 customers within 2 hours, according to Whitesides.

But, before power could be restored, it caused considerable disruption to retail commerce and school activities throughout the affected area.

“Due to the length of the power outage, we decided to cancel school,” Shelley School District Superintendent Chad Williams said.” We used the school’s text system to notify parents. However, we delayed the buses leaving the school to the regular end of school time in case a parent didn’t get the notification that school was let out early.”

The power outage occurred on a day when temperatures hovered in the mid-30, so cooling house temperatures was not an issue for the elder or homebound. Just remember to reset those antiquated clocks on devices that do not have a backup battery or are not tied to the internet, like ground lighting or water softeners.